


Fingertips in the fountain

by A_French_Ship



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, Fem!Q, Genderswap, Lesbian, Q (James Bond) is a Holmes, fem!Bond - Freeform, fem00q
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23737936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_French_Ship/pseuds/A_French_Ship
Summary: “007, I’m afraid, is quite a special case,” Moneypenny replied, not clearing the situation at all. “I advise you read this file and take a coat. A car will be waiting for you in half an hour,” she added above her shoulder on her way out of R&D.~Q's first days at '6, her first meeting with 007 and the story that ensues.
Relationships: James Bond/Q
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	1. Waking up in the morning

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by q00kies's superb fanarts of Female Bond and Female Q, which you can find here: https://q00kies.tumblr.com/post/189885445497/well-f-lil-bonus-with-mrs-bond-under-the
> 
> Hope you'll enjoy!

Dressing up in the morning had never felt that nerve-wracking before. Clothes felt too tight, suffocating, hair tussled and not beautifully so. She had to remind herself that beautiful was not what she was aiming – had she ever? Today she would wear her newly achieved persona, today more than clothes she would sport the role of a life-time.

Her agile fingers buttoned up the plain blouse she had picked from her wardrobe, observing her reflection in the mirror. Was she still twenty-five or had she aged in the course of the night? She remembered the youth on her face not a day before. Even during the array of tests the MI6 had put her through throughout the last few months she had not aged the least, she had kept a sparkle in her green eyes. But now the weight of her mission to come had crashed on her during the night and there was another person standing in the mirror.

Yes, she thought, another person. Starting from today, she would be Q.

* * *

“Corduroy,” Moneypenny noted aloud after the two women had met in the front of her desk, Q still adjusting the black cord of her identification card around her neck. “That’s an interesting choice.”

Q threw her a glare she could not hold back. She had hoped that MI6 workers, albeit female, did not indulge in petty superficial observations like the fabric in which her trousers were cut and that they kept stereotypical behaviours at bay as far as work was concerned.

“Don’t take it personally,” Moneypenny replied, blushing slightly as she realised Q perhaps was not the ally she was looking for. The younger woman wondered if it were her way of apologising and if so, if every single women in the building would let her feel slightly uncomfortable like Eve had just did. “Follow me.”

As Moneypenny proceeded with the visit of the building, Q looked at her trousers – corduroy, yes, deep blue with that. Quite unlike everything any other worker wore, she gathered when they ran into different members of the agency. Just a pile of insignificant suits, greys, dark blues and blacks, men and women alike. She scolded herself for even thinking about it, for even sparing her outfit a thought, in this manner that she despised in so many women.

Her eyes ghostly went from corridors to corridors, from administrative floors to administrative floors with the same boredom, paying more attention to air ducts and the natures of floor covering than to her temporary guide’s words of presentation. She shook a dozen of hands, remembering names and faces, even identification numbers with the accuracy she had displayed during her tests and had got her into the position she was now on the verge of undertaking. But be it nerves or her lack of sleep, Q could not seem to focus on anything more than the essential details Moneypenny threw at her with confidence. Even eye contact, that she usually forced herself to keep in an attempt to socially conform, felt overwhelming at this moment.

They were near the agents’ training quarters when the tall Black woman stopped abruptly.

“You don’t seem interested,” Moneypenny stated after more than forty-five minutes, slightly amused as she turned around to face her young protégée, all clicking of heels and vaporous motions of ivory sleeves, sturdy skirt. The lure of clothes again, Q cursed herself.

“I am,” Q protested, her cheeks heating up, afraid her position might be questioned if M’s assistant told him about her lack of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm she did not lack in the slightest. Visits though seemed like the pantomime of museum perambulations, which was not why she had been hired, was it? She chose another approach though: “But I could’ve simply hacked the plans on my phone and spare you the extra work.”

“Would it have been hacking though?” Moneypenny gave her a knowing smile, her chin pointing in the direction of the card hanging from her neck. “Is it presumptuous of me to believe you did it already? When you were waiting for me in the corridor?”

Q bit her lower lip, her chapped skin hurting as to remind her to keep a low profile for the time being. Moneypenny read her face and burst into laughter – a strange sound, really, very harmonious as if she had been made aware of how attractive she was.

“Alright,” the woman said as she came down, shaking her head. “The main goal of this visit was for me to introduce you to our 00-agents, whom you’ll mainly be in charge of, as you know.” Q nodded eagerly. “They aren’t all there, some are on missions abroad, but, well.”

The door of the training room opened on the tall and bulky silhouette of a man wiping his face with a sponge towel. Angular jaw carved in ice and broad shoulders, he had the threatening look of an assassin. His face lit up when he caught sight of Moneypenny and the new recruit, his smile almost wolfish, Q noticed as the man walked closer, surely expecting to be introduced.

“Oh, right,” M’s assistant let out, shifting the documents she held from one arm to the other so her leading hand could motion in their direction. “Q, this is 006, Alec Trevelyan,” she began, not impressed the least by the stature of the man. Q was not either, too aware of the fact that she would be the one in power. “Alec, this is your new quartermaster.”

She felt his disagreeable look on her. On top of being a professional assassin, he probably was a professional seducer, which 00-agents were trained to be after all. It did not make the perversity of his look any less agonising to Q though. M had warned her on their last appointment that agents sometimes needed to be tamed, to be befriended, and that this process could take several months, even more so since she was a woman – now Q understood what it implied and that the warning did not only resulted from M’s wariness towards hiring women for positions of responsibility. A little unnecessary in Q’s opinion, knowing that the previous M was a woman and that she had turned the house from a state of decrepitude into quite a competitive and efficient agency.

“Nice to meet you,” Alec soughed, an eyebrow raising when the younger woman shook his hand with a strength she had trained herself to resort to.

“The pleasure is mine, 006,” Q replied with a tone which revealed nothing of the lack of humour and the minor distrust she felt at that moment. She had promised herself that same morning before leaving her cats to their own fate, that she would let nothing make her question her ability to take the helm. She had been tested, timed, examined over and over again, put through physical and psychological strains for hours on end; and finally she had been chosen among the few candidates left.

“I shall natter with you some other time,” Alec said with a boyish smile, his towel hanging around his neck. “I’ve got some medical exam to attend to.”

Moneypenny, apparently aware of his schedule, nodded along before pushing the door of the training quarters open, revealing a view and the different rooms down the mezzanine corridor – weights rooms filled with whimsical instruments of torture, shooting ranges, strange rooms featuring as many strange elements that Q attributed to an indoor attempt of recreating situations of the field. Parkour?

Moneypenny leaned against the rail and started to point at some agents who were training – or torturing themselves, Q felt horrified about some of the motions they managed to put their bodies through.

“002, just back in training after an ankle injury,” the older woman said, pointing at a man who was running on a treadmill. “0012, just there,” she said, now pointing at a man doing press-ups on a steal beam.

Q smiled, feeling a patronising surge at the idea that those agents were like piles of flesh and muscles at her Majesty’s service - and under _her_ orders too. Moneypenny turned to her, amused by her sudden smile, a rare sight she had come to understand.

“What?” she asked, her own smile revealing a perfectly aligned dentition. “What were you expecting from a training room?”

“I don’t know,” Q replied, allowing herself to relieve the pressure after that morning they had spent in each other’s company. She did not believe in female natural connivance, just like she did not believe her role at ‘6 was to befriend with every single one of her co-workers. “Sack races?”

Moneypenny’s laughter rang again like a melody. Q always felt disarmed when she made women laugh – there was always a slight probability for them to be laughing at her expense, she thought. But since the corduroy incident, Moneypenny had been the most professional being, friendly still, but entirely professional. Q liked that in people and she felt like she had forgiven the assistant for her previous distasteful boldness. Her laugh was too charming for her not to forgive her anyway.

“Come on, Q, I’ll walk you back to your quarters now,” she announced, still chuckling. What could she do but obey?

* * *

R&D was a soothing place to work from, all muted tones and muffled rumbles of computers. Wasn’t it what Q had longed for throughout her whole life? Days after days she was taking her marks, getting more familiar with names and places inside of the agency, with the procedures which any of her motions required. Not once did she felt illegitimate for her name, for being part of the family whose eldest son was more than acquainted with the MI5.

In the R&D, she was finally surrounded by people like her, computer nerds, some of which had failed the same tests she had successfully gone through – just faintly failed, failed enough to be accepted at ‘6 under other people’s orders, under other code names and functions, just like the explosion of the MI6 a few months ago had required.

R, she gathered, seemed a friendly allied to her. Her flashy hair and her disinterest for anything human seemed quite fitting with her own quirky attitude. The other young woman had been hired a couple of weeks before her and thus had already bedded in when Q had introduced herself as their new first in command. Q wondered if she could make of R an ally, given befriending with Moneypenny seemed out of reach – too flamboyant, too threateningly nice, she scared her sometimes. Q needed time to integrate the idea of the presence of someone, of their will to be close to her, overly nice people scared her more than spiders. Or perhaps exactly like spiders. R, on the other hand, had probably known the same path she had, minus her brothers’ influence on the government. She felt around her, through the colluding glances they exchanged whenever one of their programs worked well or a mission ended successfully, a real sense of camaraderie.

They were working on a prototype of radio, one of the several prototypes Q had had to develop during her intensive training and that she now had some time to eventually finalize; when Moneypenny crossed the threshold with a few files in her arms, high heels clicking on the tilled floor as always.

“Quartermaster,” she greeted her with a smile. It had become a new hobby of hers that to call her by that name, instead of a much more modest Q. “R.”

R nodded at the woman, her hands still gripping a tiny screwdriver when she put some of her stray pink strands behind her ears – she also was quite intimidated in Moneypenny’s presence.

“I have a mission for you,” she told Q, holding her one of the files, which the younger woman took out of reflex more than free-will.

“A mission?” She echoed, more used to hearing that being said to agents and not her – weren’t her whole job a continuous mission?

“Exactly,” M’s assistant nodded, a bright smile on her lips, enjoying the two other women’s confusion. Q could sense R was holding herself from having a look at the file, as she felt equally involved by her co-worker’s sudden pressing need. “007 just showed up again,” Moneypenny explained and facing the other two’s frowns, she felt the need to add more explanations. “An agent whom we had lost the track of after some…” She paused to consider her wording and Q felt a more private matter stood there. “Some mishaps on the field. Anyway, she’s back on the field now and I need you to deliver her new equipment to her.”

Q tilted her head on the side. “Can’t she just drop by?” _Like any other agent?_ “009 will soon land in Bogota and R and I were actually in the middle of something.” _My cup of tea will turn cold_.

Moneypenny gave her an amused glance, as though there was something Q ignored, something bigger than her little ego at the moment, the apparently imperative need of a new radio set and 009 on the field.

“What?” Q asked, whose growing up with two older brothers had caused to be particularly intolerant to keeping secrets.

“007, I’m afraid, is quite a special case,” Moneypenny replied, not clearing the situation at all. “I advise you read this file and take a coat. A car will be waiting for you in half an hour,” she added above her shoulder on her way out of R&D.

* * *

Special or not, Q did not like the idea of special treatments for an agent, and could not comprehend the necessity of it since 007 was apparently _not_ on a mission. The car let her in an adjacent street to the National Gallery, like the plan M and Tanner had come up with in the file.

A quick look at her watch told her she was quite on time, letting her some time to go through security and walked up to the galleries, welcomed by the reassuring presence of Gainsborough’s portraits. Her green eyes lingered on a couple of Hogarth’s pieces before her attention went back to the object of her coming here. She scanned the room, searching for the woman whose identification photographs she had memorised, not letting the apparent sex-appeal of this woman get in the way of her mission. Straight blond hair, icy blue eyes, a strong jawline and shoulders shaped by years of training. Q did not know exactly what was so appealing about that – she had never fallen for that type of women before, she had never really fallen for anyone before, to be honest. And she had to be quite wary of the power of a trained seducer. Those were dangerous games to play.

She spotted 007 in a black suit, perfectly hugging the shape of her shoulders, sitting on a bench in the adjacent gallery, her back straight, revealing her ease, her maturity when Q was so clumsy with everything.

She sat next to her on the bench. Her anorak rustled when it folded under her weight, as Q was only half intimidated by the presence of such a thing of beauty by her side. Turner helped putting her beauty into perspective though. Q had seen people stare, but now that she was closer to the agent, she could see lines in the corner of her eyes and she felt a spring of selfish pride at the idea of being in a position of power, youth.

She could feel 007 had registered her presence through her long golden locks of hair, but she did not try to distance herself from the stranger, leading Q to wonder if she had an idea of whom she might be.

“It always makes me feel a bit melancholy,” she began when 007 made no attempt to talk to her. The tall blond woman cast her a quick glance, visibly unsettled. “A grand old war ship, being ignominiously hauled away for scrap.” Q felt her pride swell in her chest, an amused smile playing on her lips. Her agent might take it personally, Q would then taste the whole extent of her revenge on Moneypenny and on 007 who forced her to venture out of her den for such insignificant job. “The inevitability of time, don’t you think?” She briefly paused, glancing at her interlocutor, cruelty boiling in her veins. 007 crossed her legs, revealing a pair of pointy dark heels. _Femme fatale_ , Q thought. “What do you see?”

“A bloody big ship,” 007 replied, unfolding her long legs to stand up. Her tone was not unlike Trevelyan’s, self-assured and low. “Excuse me.”

“007,” Q called, quietly enough so the strange sobriquet would not draw attention. The sculptural silhouette of 007 in her fitted black suit drew already too much attention to the younger woman’s taste. “I’m your new Quartermaster.”

The blond froze on the bench, sighing after a fleeting moment. Q took great delight in the expression on her face.

“You must be joking,” came the agent’s answer, a groan almost.

“Why? Because I’m not wearing a lab coat?” Perhaps that encounter was Moneypenny’s way of granting her a little distraction or a way to punish their agent, Q was not quite certain yet. She conveyed to her words all the bantering frustration she had accumulated after several impromptu encounters with 006 throughout the previous week.

“Because you still have spots.”

So the whole inevitability of time speech had moved her, Q triumphed silently. “My complexion is hardly relevant.”

“Your competence is.” Now, she wanted to play that game.

“Age is no guarantee of efficiency,” Q murmured her eyes sliding on the painting in front of them.

“And youth is no guarantee of innovation,” the blonde replied, syllables curling around her hoarse voice. Perhaps Q understood better what Moneypenny had meant when she had said that she was a special case.

“Well, I’ll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pyjamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field,” the younger woman stated and she was quite certain of what she claimed. Numbers could not be contradicted on the matter.

For the first time 007 turned to her and looked at her face, seemingly amused. “Oh, so why do you need me?”

The question brought a smile to Q’s lips. Was it what M had implied by taming and befriending? “Every now and then a trigger has to be pulled.”

“Or not pulled. It’s hard to know which in your pyjamas.” Q felt her cheeks heating up ever so slightly as a strong hand elegantly reached for hers. “Q.”

Their hands touched, the agent’s calloused after years on the field yet warm and gentle, Q’s soft and crowned with atrociously bitten nails. “007.”


	2. Miscommunication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moneypenny's birthday leads to serious banter

“Alright, 004, back up should arrive in thirty-four seconds,” Q told her agent as a quick look at the screens surrounding her showed that 004 had made it to the point they had agreed on prior to the mission. “R, call the extraction team, please.”

The pink-haired young woman nodded, already working on it. Throughout their four months working together, the two young women had learnt to work hand in hand, almost understanding each other without having to resort to words sometimes.

“Twenty-three,” R counted down and Q nodded, relieved that the perilous mission was finally coming to an end.

Bloody CIA and their navel-gazing agenda – they had nearly lost an agent because of them. Never again, Q groaned in her head, doing her best so her bitter expression would not be visible on her face, which proved inefficient judging by a few of her minions’ understanding looks.

“Sixteen,” Q told the agent, the laboured breathing of whom she could still hear through her ear piece. “Ten.” A quick look at the screen showing his vitals told Q that the man certainly needed rest, deserved it anyway. “Four. Three. Two. One.” The man sighed. “I’ll let you, starting from now on. Thank you, 004.”

Q took her ear piece out at the moment 007 showed up in R&D, an apparition she had not expected. Her body tensed again, apprehending another wave of work crashing unto her when she had just envisioned the delight of a long-awaited lunchbreak.

“007,” she greeted the woman, taking her now cold cup of Earl Grey and sipping from it – a little comfort compared to what she prepared herself to face.

“Q,” the tall blond woman replied with a satisfied rictus.

Her voice sounded like velvet in the inhuman atmosphere of Q Branch, all low range and self-assured smoothness. The quartermaster looked at her with eyes she hoped were not too insistent. She was wearing a white tailored suit, an eccentricity in colour that Q was not accustomed to seeing her sport. No tie, two buttons left unbuttoned. 007 enjoyed her second day of recovery yet she looked stunning and more ready to fight than ever. In four months at ‘6, Q had supervised eight of 007’s missions, all of which had turned well, exception made of the last one which had left the forty-year old woman with a sprained wrist and ten stitches on her left thigh – nothing impressive considering Bond had been tremendously outnumbered.

“How’s your arm?” Q asked, purposely vague as to give her agent the impression that she had dismissed the information already. 007 enjoyed attention a little too much. Q felt that if she indulged her too often, the blonde would end up popping unexpectedly in her office – which she already did apparently. There was an unease each time she looked at her, something unprofessional lingering in her chest without her understanding. She ignored what Bond was looking for, with all her half smiles and her wit, but she could not – or rather, was not willing to – spend hours trying to elucidate it, walking on eggshells.

“Good,” Bond replied, showing her splint. There was a cocky light in her blue eyes that showed that she understood what Q attempted to do. “Quite unnecessary, if you will.”

“How can I help you then?” Another sip of tea and a pointed look above her thick glasses.

Bond looked around her, at R and the few other minions who had not left the building for the canteen for a quick lunch, a luxury, Q gathered, she would have to do without today again. Since her hiring she had tasted the canteen’s food less than ten times. They made a decent ratatouille, though.

“I’m afraid my coming here isn’t entirely professional,” Bond began, leaning against Q’s desk. The hazel look of the younger woman slid on her left leg – it was a bold move to wear a white outfit when your stitches were two days old. “Eve asked me to invite ‘the girls from Q Branch’ out tonight. I reckoned she was talking about you two?”

R and Q turned to Bond as if they shared the same body and the tall blonde burst into laughter. She had found a new hobby in tormenting the two nerds of R&D, Q thought with a mix of bitterness and resignation.

“Invite? What for?” The first-in-command asked, for R, whose job did not imply the management of a team and communication skills, tended to be even more anti-social than Q was.

This time Bond’s smile grew wider, not unlike that of Trevelyan – a wolfish smile, the kind of self-sufficient grin that always left Q wondering if she would be made fun of or eaten alive. “Her birthday,” the older woman lightly said, feigning indifference.

Q closed her eyes when she felt a blush creeping to her cheeks. Her brain cells went through all the data she had memorised while checking everyone’s intel at her arrival at MI6. Moneypenny’s date of birth had escaped her attention, or her memory. “I didn’t know it was her birthday today. Otherwise I would’ve-“

“Were you supposed to know?” Bond was playing now, like a big cat enjoying the torture of their future meal. Q almost loathed R was remaining so quiet and not trying to rescue her. What was this whole female solidarity thing films kept talking about?

Q sighed, adjusting the position of her glasses on her nose, before she added with her good old exhausted know-it-all timber: “I’m supposed to know a lot of things here. Everything.”

Her answer had the merit of making Bond’s smile turn a little fonder. “Learning those things is a process,” she replied, toying with a USB stick that had been tossed on Q’s desk in the morning. The latter thought it best not to tell her that it contained the whole plans of a former nuclear test site in Kazakhstan. “Nine at the Candelabra then?” 

Bond stepped away from the desk, leaving behind her the scent of her woody perfume. Q turned to R, in the silent schoolmate agreement that the presence of one implied the presence of the other, but her pink-hair second-in-command had already turned back to her computer screen.

“Fine,” Q whispered between her lips and she was sure 007 heard from afar.

* * *

Q did not want to be that type of girl, the type that let the presence of Bond influence her outfit for the night. Yet she found herself standing in front of her cupboard for far too long for her taste, getting rid of her MI6 outfit – a simple combination of brown trousers and a blue cardigan – and searching something more appropriate to Moneypenny’s birthday. And to Bond’s effortless class.

The Candelabra apparently was not that classy a place, so Q, defeated, jumped into a pair of jeans and an oversized jumper before rushing to the Tube. An administrative matter had already kept her at ‘6 for far too long in the evening and now it was already a quarter past nine. Once sat in the Tube, she started to doubt her whole undertaking – Converses and knitted jumper, really? Her only way out was R who would undoubtedly wear something similar. What was she trying to do anyway? Impress Bond? Make herself appear as though she did not enjoy the comforting warmth of wool and flannelette all that much?

After a sigh deep breath meant to get rid of her last fits of uncertainty at the idea of stepping into a place filled with young party-animals – according to the website-, Q walked in the Candelabra, immediately spotting the little group of MI6’s workers in a corner of the pub. Moneypenny, Tanner, Bond, as expected, along with two other 00-agents, among whom stood Alec Trevelyan, in all his carnivorous splendour. R, that traitor, was not there and Q assumed she never would.

“Dropped the corduroy?” Alec asked as a sort of greeting which was immediately shushed by Moneypenny, which Q was unsure what to think about.

“You didn’t drop the compliments, Trevelyan,” Q cheerfully replied, sitting on the chair that Tanner cleared from their coats for her. She saw Bond laughing from the other end of the table, her elegant yet deadly fingers wrapped around her glass of martini. “Happy birthday, Moneypenny,” Q said to the woman across from her, a sheepish smile painted on her lips. “I’m so sorry I didn’t think about it.”

“You didn’t know,” the woman protested. “Not like _someone_. And it’s Eve for you, how many times will I have to tell you?”

Another sheepish smile and Q found her eyes drifting to Bond again. She had changed into something darker. Something revealing her collarbones and the muscles of her neck. “Is R stuck in traffic?” she asked after a pause and Bond laughed harder, probably understanding her point.

“No,” Moneypenny deplored with saddened brown eyes. “She texted me saying she had troubles with her boyfriend.”

The excuse seemed like thumbing her nose at Q. R did not have a boyfriend, even she, who never asked that sort of questions fearing she could be asked the same thing, knew that. The waitress saved Q from another of Alec’s jokes and soon the conversation turned to other topics than fake boyfriends and shitty excuses and Q found peace again in relative mutism.

* * *

One and a half beer later, the quartermaster was gazing at her co-workers dancing to the sound of some 90s Britpop, alone or so at the table, her attention sometimes shifting to some work-related subjects, her tipsiness helping with the mental conception of the craziest ideas.

“Are you alright?” Bond asked, sitting next to her after having ordered another round of drinks at the bar.

Her voice sounded ten times better, silkier, through the haze of alcohol. Q looked at the blonde for far too long before she replied: “Of course I am.”

“I just wanted to be sure. You didn’t drink a lot, yet you look…squiffy already. Are you sick, by all means? Or just tired?” Bond toyed with the olive in her glass and Q looked at it swirl in the pale martini, thinking about how apparently Bond liked to toy with things when she was next to her.

“I’m not a big…” Q considered her options of words, before motioning at the table in front of them which was covered in empty glasses. Bond looked at her with a cocked eyebrow, amazed by the fact that for once her quartermaster did not have the proper term in her possession. “I don’t drink. Usually.” Q blushed, ashamed by her sudden lack of eloquence.

“Don’t you?” She echoed, sipping her martini and studying the mess of curls that formed Q’s bob. She had never openly commented on it, but Q was self-aware enough to know that people usually had an _opinion_ about it. Too unkept, too wild, too curly, too unruly, too…much.

“No. Whatever you think my student’s years looked like, I can bet you’re awfully mistaking.”

Bond laughed – wrinkles formed at the corner of her eyes when she did, Q observed, before looking back at her pint of beer which had turned disgustingly lukewarm.

“Perhaps,” Bond began daring a hand at her glass, “it is the drink and not the drinker.” She touched the side of the pint and shook her head in hyperbolised disappointment. “Beer, Q. No proper lady should drink beer from the Candelabra.”

“I’m afraid, I’m not a _proper lady_ , Bond, for whatever that means,” she replied with a sigh, setting her glass away from her agent in order to keep it safe from her mockery. “I don’t like beer all that much, to be honest, but making sure I don’t enjoy such vices reassures me.” Q could feel Bond’s intrigued look on the side of her face, so she draped herself in her witty pride and said, certain alcohol was to blame: “There’s some family inheritance that I wish I can keep at bay as long as possible, so to speak.” A mental image of Sherlock passed through her mind, along with their father’s society dipsomania. Her confession provoked a surge of annoyance in her character and she added in an exasperated – yet tired – sigh: “And Trevelyan doesn’t drink either, why don’t you go and ask him if he caught a cold or something?”

To that Bond chuckled lowly, apparently not moved by her co-worker’s temper. She shook her head and finished her martini with enough confidence to make it tolerable to Q that she belated her answer like this. “I don’t need to ask Alec, darling, for I already know why he doesn’t. And I’ve been a witness of his self-destructive tendencies for quite a long time now. I prefer if he stands away from alcohol for the time being, if you will.”

Q nodded slowly, alcohol preventing her from being totally mortified. After four months at ‘6, how could she still ignore Moneypenny’s birthday and Alec’s medical report?

Once more Bond shook her head, her straight strands brushing against her shoulders, and hummed in disagreement. “No, no, don’t give me the sad eyes, it’s not your fault. Martini makes me a real chatterbox, I shouldn’t have told you. Alec wouldn’t be happy with that.”

Q could understand that. Her beer had made her confess for too much already too. Bond did not seem fazed at all by her revelations. She was older and had probably, thanks to her agent training, seen far more than any human should be allowed to see in a lifetime. “For how long have you been friends the two of you?”

“Oh,” Bond let out a shaky breath which made her sound older than she truly was. Forty, Q had checked several times in her records. “More than fifteen years, I think.” Memories seemed to cross her mind and allowed Q to have a discrete look at her face. Now that she was not lit by the wan neon lights of MI6 but the subdued warm lights of the bar, she did not look half as threatening and her mockery had softened too. “Where were you fifteen years ago?”

Q would have lied if she told Bond that she had never calculated the age gap between them at least twice. Just to make sure. “Secondary school.”

The bulky blonde nodded slowly, as the information seemed to confirm what she already knew. Q’s thick glasses and corduroy trousers could not fool anyone – there were ongoing rumours about the how and why such a young quartermaster had been granted the job. Not everyone knew she was a Holmes and the few who did had drawn conclusions that were wrong and tended to infuriate the young woman. Bond must have known – how could she not? - but did not seem to judge her for that.

“You’ve skipped a year, I presume,” she said instead of commenting on her young age, like everyone deemed necessary all of the time.

“Two,” Q corrected, sealing their tacit agreement that age gap, familial privileges and other alcoholism related issues would not be discussed, or at least not that night. 

“I presumed badly.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

* * *

There had been more dancing and more looking at the others dancing from Q’s part, and then when midnight was passed and the week-end had definitely begun, Q stood up to go back to her place, catch a night bus to East London, but Bond stopped her. The younger woman wanted to remind her that downing three martinis was surely not the right way to be a believable designated driver, but strangely enough, the blonde did not bear any sign of her alcohol consumption. Q heard her stating that it was one of MI6’s requirements that to hold their drink properly – but the prospect of being driven home and thus escaping the slight discomfort night buses implied had already convinced Q to close her eyes on the risk they were taking.

Ten minutes later Q found herself in a German monster, her belt fastened and her hazel eyes sliding on the perfectly clean dashboard. She had suggestions about options Bond did not possess yet – quirky options, but funny ones, that she might enjoy. The blonde’s tastes in cars were as obnoxiously classy as her tastes in suits and witty comebacks; and, be it the aftermath of the alcohol or her usual tendency to feel ashamed by her own inability to look fancy, Q was smitten.

Bond typed her address in her GPS, turning the robotic woman’s voice down so they would not be disturbed. But there was no conversation between them two during the whole drive home. It did not seem awkward, simply a way to relax and rest after an exhausting day – Q even thought she had dozed off at some point, between Whitechapel and Poplar.

Finally the car stopped in front of her building and Q replaced her glasses on her nose, biting her lips to give herself some courage before addressing Bond with the plain banalities people uttered in that sort of circumstances. But before her co-worker had the opportunity to say anything, Bond stepped out of her car and waited for Q to join her outside. Some wind sneaked under her jumper and seeped through her jeans, making her regret she did not wear her usual pair of corduroy trousers.

“I think Moneypenny was glad you came,” Bond said once they had reached the front door of her apartment building. Q was slightly nervous about how far Bond would venture in her life – would she want to sneak at her DVD collection or a glass of wine that Q did not have in her possession anyway?

“Was she,” Q echoed, standing in front of the door, waiting for Bond to go back to her car, where she belonged. Or did her protective attitude imply that she would be escorted to the lift and later on to her _own_ door? Q bit her tongue so she would not remind her agent that protecting Queen and country meant exactly what it meant, _Queen and country_. “I would’ve bet a woman as outgoing as Eve would’ve chosen other people to celebrate her birthday with.”

“What kind of other people?” Bond asked, putting one fist on her hip, waiting for Q’s explanations with a frolicsome smile.

“Well, firstly people who aren’t professional killers or computer nerds.”

“Tanner was there too!”

Q could not hold back a fit of laughter and a second later, instead of getting back to her car, Bond was closer to her, her muscular fingers reaching for a messy brown curl that had set free from the grasp of Q’s knitted scarf. She twisted it around her index and for a second Q held her breath, the unfathomable fear of Bond’s tight grip squeezing her chest as much as another sort of feeling insidiously seeped through her entrails. She had this mad thought that the other woman would tear her strand off, but of course Bond did not. Instead she brushed it behind her quartermaster’s ear, right behind the arm of her glasses.

“And I am glad you came too,” Bond said, letting go of the curl and smiling more gently than usual to her co-worker.

Q felt her mouth open in the urge to say something, but her brain had not catch up and she remained dumbfounded for a couple of seconds – far too long given her usual abilities. She almost resented Bond for causing such effects on people.

“Is it part of a mission I am not aware of?” she asked, more bitter than her face revealed. As much as Bond had displayed softness, Q was not really okay with that sort of proximity, or rather with people thinking they could resort to such proximity without her consent.

“I don’t hear your voice in my ear advising me the best way out,” 007 replied a knowing rictus on her lips, but her softness was forgotten and she stepped back on the kerb, her car keys in her hand. Q nodded at the sensitivity of her allusion – agents were trained in more than physical ways, Bond had a gift for words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed that chapter! If you did please give this story some support and hit the kudo button, unless you're feeling eloquent (or just nice) and want to leave a comment! Reactions of all sorts are welcomed with spirit and a strong urge to keep on writing! :)
> 
> See you soon~


	3. Ambiguation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Waiting for Bond to eventually bring that woman to orgasm multiple times was agony. Later she would call it embarrassment, although it did not fall into the range of emotions she had experienced."

Their first plan had foundered spectacularly right before Q’s eyes. 007’s cover had nearly been unveiled and all the work they had done for the last three weeks could have crashed right there if it were not for the agent’s capacity to improvise with the little resources she had in her possession. Q had been impressed but there was no denying that Bond’s mission was turning unexpectedly sour, so sour in fact that M’s supervision had been requested.

“Forget about the initial plan,” M ordered, his eyes scanning the screens where CCTV footages showed the creamy corridors of a Monegasque casino.

“Shall we not revert to it all the more?” Q frowned, crossing her arms on her chest and feeling a thin layer of sweat gathering against her armpits.

“No. Code C75,” M simply spat before leaving Q Branch, to the great bafflement of the quartermaster who looked at Tanner, searching for answers.

“What is C75?” she asked, mildly annoyed by her sudden lack of knowledge on the matter. Ignorance was not something she was accustomed to.

“Seduction,” Bond blankly replied through her ear piece and Q felt a cold hand squeeze her entrails.

“Alright,” came her reply, as she readjusted her glasses on her nose and pretended the whole situation did not offend her the least. She was _not_ offended. Not at all. Why would she be anyway? “007, do you think it’s manageable?”

Through her ear piece she heard Bond chuckling softly, lightly. “It is,” she simply replied and less than an hour later, their new target, the thirty-year-old Catalan mistress of their initial target, was drunkenly giggling in the lift, their agent by her side, probably holding her close, kissing her neck, whispering the lewdest sweet nothings.

“Where’s Grisham?” Q asked R, hiding her annoyance behind her sipping her tea and her professionalism. She could hear the faintest change in their target’s breathing, her graphic groans and, more mortifying still, her offers to Bond.

“Second floor, still at the casino,” R replied, her voice soulless compared to the one of Bond’s soon-to-be lover.

“Good.” On her far left screen, Q could check on her agent’s pulse which was increasing the more they neared the bedroom.

“ _Oh, bad girl_ ,” came Bond’s seductive voice. So low.

“ _I’m a bad bad girl_ ,” the young woman replied, her voice veiled by alcohol and the clichéd pantomime of foreplay. “ _I’m the baddest girl you’ll ever fuck!”_ Q rolled her eyes, some people suffered a pathological lack of creativity.

_“I’m sure you are.”_

“Grisham is moving,” R warned her superior, her now purple hair tugged behind her ears as she squinted in concentration before her screens. “Third floor!”

In Q’s ear piece, the woman let out a playful purr when Bond seemingly spanked her. Her quartermaster cleared her throat. “007, I advise you skip to the sex, Grisham is coming back.” The word sounded strange in her mouth suddenly.

The screen showed Bond’s pulse had jumped higher at the news, but Q trusted she would hide it under the pretence of arousal. Their target, after all, was a very cute lady.

“False alarm,” R sighed. “He’s back at the casino.”

“What was he doing?” Q asked, her voice tense. Those drug barons’ actions were not the worst to predict, but they did had a lot of henchmen.

“Probably looking for more cash, or cocaine” R replied, typing feverishly. “He’s losing, but he’s back at another table. Black jack.”

“False alarm, 007,” Q repeated to her agent, smoothing some strands of curly hair behind the arm of her glasses. “He’s still playing.”

The game would take him more than an hour for sure, enough for Bond to drug the young woman, fuck her and leave her sleeping on the bed once the little pills would have played their part, so she would be able to search her purse and take the cylindrical code stick her racketeer of a lover had given her not an hour ago. 

Q should have hung off, just let the agent do the deed and reach for her afterwards. Yet there was a vicious need in her, an urge to listen for any information, any clue that the plan might have gone wrong. So listen she did. All of it. From the soft sighs of a woman being slowly led to arousal to the deep moaning conjured up by Bond’s apparent skills. Q wondered for a little while what the extent of their training at MI6 was, if it included those sorts of practical skills or if they only were the result of a mature woman’s personal experience. All the hypotheses she envisioned could not make the ball of nerves deflate in her stomach – it was almost sickening how bad she felt, how the situation seemed hazy and suffocating. Their target was screaming Bond’s fake name yet it seemed more intimate than any of the conversations Q had had with her former flings, more passionate, more pleasurable. She could feel R’s look on her every now and then, keeping track of her facial expressions. Waiting for Bond to eventually bring that woman to orgasm multiple times was agony. Later she would call it embarrassment, although it did not fall into the range of emotions she had experienced.

* * *

“How was the mission?” Moneypenny asked when Q let herself fall on the plastic chair of the refectory. Facing her was Alec Trevelyan, a bandage around his neck resulting from his being chocked to unconsciousness a few days before by a handful of Chinese mafiosi.

“Well, we managed,” Q sighed, organising her plate with expertise – peas on the right, pastas on the left, in the middle a valley of pepper sauce.

“Was it Bond?” Trevelyan asked as he swallowed a forkful of mashed potatoes, one of the only things that he could eat without having to go through the pain of chewing.

“Yes,” Q said, toying with her peas until they all remained nice and calm in a corner of her plate. “And a moaning lady,” she added, chuckling and looking up at 006 who shook his head at the nickname. The strangling episode had left him a little less talkative, which was all for the best in Q’s opinion.

“A usual Friday morning at ‘6,” Moneypenny commented with a smirk.

“Took three rows to get what we wanted,” Q sighed again, unsure why she was talking about that with them. Perhaps she was trying to push Alec’s buttons and force some bawdy jokes out of his aching throat. She gathered she could now that Bond was out of danger and probably waiting for her night flight somewhere in Monaco.

“I guess she had what she wanted too,” Moneypenny laughed, now nursing her cup of coffee in her manicured hands.

“Who had?” The youngest of the three asked, stabbing a pea on each end of her fork’s pikes. There must have been a hint of worry in her voice that Alec picked on for he snorted a second after she had uttered her words.

“That woman of course, not _Bond_ ,” Alec disambiguated for his quartermaster to understand. “Sex for the Crown isn’t actually the best lays we have.” Q tilted her head on the side, suddenly curious. “You can’t understand how stressful it is until you find yourself tied up and burnt with candle wax.”

Q could not hold a chuckle back at the personal anecdote, even if she felt herself blush. Alec’s eyes drifted on her face, an intriguing light sparkling in them, examining her, it seemed. In spite of all his rudeness and his boyish smiles, his patronising comments to the younger agents, 006 was a sensible being, Q had come to realise through their few months of working together. Way more articulate in his thoughts and emotions than one might think at first sight. He had days during which he brooded and seemed at stake with some dark memories – M always managed to get him back to his home, yet Q found those days the most interesting to witness, they carried the most humanity.

“Oh, I let you to it,” Moneypenny laughed, standing up after glancing at her watch. “M’s in a terrible mood today and I’m afraid he won’t take tales of Trevelyan’s sexual escapades as an excuse.”

“These were hardly of my volition!” Alec groaned back at her when she left with her plastic tray in her hands. When his attention shifted back to Q, he smiled at her: “Don’t worry, Bond’s fine. A little lesbian sex never frightened her.”

Q’s brow lifted. “I don’t worry for her. I know she didn’t find it as traumatising as you claim.”

“It isn’t always,” Alec chuckled wolfishly, coughing when his throat hurt.

_There_ , Q thought cruelly, _you should’ve hold your tongue_.

* * *

Thein had worked its way through her system and the little time Q had been able to sleep had been spent rolling across her bed, her sheets clinging to her limbs until she could not move anymore and woke up. A quick look at her phone told her that it was not even three in the morning and that her weekend was beginning in the worst way possible.

It was not something she had expected from MI6, two-day long weekends – and truly most of the time an emergency kept her at her desk ten days in a row, and some other times she would willingly spend her days off fiddling with some new equipment. But after the tough missions she had had to supervise during the last two days and the amount of work she had faced on a daily basis, Moneypenny had advised her to stay home for the weekend, sleeping and watching telly, or whatever Moneypenny thought Q did when she was not working.

Opening her eyes that night, her first thoughts were for Bond and the strange turn the mission had taken the day before. Not that sex flustered her – no – but it was her first time hearing Bond use sex as a tool for work. 004 and 0013 had used it before under her supervision, but not 007. And the kind of sex 007 had used – _used!_ – was perhaps the closest to what Q had imagined her sex life to look like at age twenty-five.

Be it her acute memory or her sleep deprivation, but Q could still hear the sounds the other woman had made while Bond had been… doing what she had done. The moans had conjured up images that Q could not erase from her memory, toes curling, hips jerking up and rocking. Before she realised it, Q’s fingers reach down between her thighs, slipping under her pyjamas, drifting through her pubic hair where a wet warmth welcomed them. Less than five minutes later, she heard herself moaning against her pillow as she did not know who she was pretending to be – the one watching, the one receiving or Bond herself.

* * *

“I’ve told you to take your weekend off for once!” Moneypenny protested when she saw the young quartermaster sipping tea at her desk Saturday morning. It was a blessing she had not come earlier to check on Q Branch so she had not seen Q at eight in the morning checking on the Walther 006 had brought back nearly intact from his last mission.

Q was about to protest or simply dismiss her comment – as a quartermaster she had all the rights to be there -, but Moneypenny dropped a pile of files on her desk before she could open her mouth.

“Gifts from M,” she announced with the cheekiest smile. MI6 tended to make its workers incredibly cruel in Q’s opinion.

“Should I thank you?” She asked, looking up from 006’s weapon and leaving it on the table to have a look at the different files – budget-related matter, great. “Maybe I should’ve listened to you.”

“See?” Moneypenny triumphed, crossing her arms on her chest.

A second later, she left her office and Q to her thoughts altogether. And what thoughts, Q mentally sighed, disappointed with herself. She had never been one for fantasies of that nature, so vivid and featuring people she knew; and it seemed her mind, laced with exhaustion, could not compartmentalise what was appropriate for work and what was not and Q had to stop every two seconds or so to scold her vicious inner self.

It was noon when the arrival of a text message on her personal device made her left her files. Mycroft, she thought while reflecting on the unnecessary care her brother had put into dissimulating his phone number. Especially since he was perfectly aware of the fact that she could have cracked his number, GPS coordinates and what he had had for lunch in less than five minutes.

**_Dear sister mine. Father’s and mother’s anniversary is due to take place next week-end at Holmes’ mansion. You are of course welcome. Please, answer and show up._ **

More than an exhausted sigh, Q snorted at her reading of the text, some tension building up in her body as it always did when she received those sorts of messages. Invitations. Mycroft really did manage to mix the right amount of uptight coldness with his obsequiousness. Of all the things Q loathed about the oldest Holmes, this particular behaviour kept her from visiting more often.

As she knew her brother had set an acknowledgment of receipt to his message, Q purposefully let it unanswered for as long as she could, pushing her personal phone further away on her desk, right under her pile of paperwork.

Her pen grazed the sheets for a second but her mind was definitely elsewhere, still lingering on the idea of attending the anniversary or not, although that simple thought made her want to retrieve in her den. Most of all there was something ironical about being invited to celebrate the anniversary of Mycroft’s and Sherlock’s parents, a token of their undying love, when this exact same affection had faltered enough twenty-six years before that it had led to her birth. Thinking about it made Q guilty: Sherlock would be mad to see in his step-sister’s eyes the light of sarcasm. He would claim she was family and that she had always been treated the same way they had all been treated; and that Q was willing to admit. She did not bear a grudge against her family so that she was oblivious of Mrs Holmes’ fondness for her. The woman had pitied her so much that she had always insisted on her receiving the same upbringing her boys had had – private schools, long pastoral holidays at the Holmes’ manor and knitted Christmas jumpers included.

To avoid any other message from Mycroft, and thus any more guilt, she turned her personal phone off and tossed it in the top drawer of her desk, just to be sure. Such bourgeois heterosexual revels would not disturb her work, she repeated herself as she appended her signature down an accident report. Reports were more numerous than what she had anticipated while being hired – accident reports concerning her minions underestimating the strength of a blow, accident reports concerning her agents damaging or losing their equipment, budget reports, all sorts of reports, a never-ending round dance of reports bouncing before her eyes until she could not take their scrawl anymore and saw it in her dreams.

* * *

In spite of what Moneypenny had wished for her day – that was to say, stay at home, rest, or whatever the sick mind of Moneypenny was capable of imagining -, Q spent the remaining hours of her Saturday’s shift in Q-branch, taking care of the pile of paperwork M’s assistant had laid on her desk and giving her new project its last modifications. On paper, it looked revolutionary, light-years ahead of anything that the MI6 had come up with during the last decade. A new electronic chip to be inserted between the epidermis and the dermis of her agents’ forearm, capable of automatically drawing information from any electronic device over a perimeter of three yards, unnoticed and mostly inoffensive for the wearer – but _mostly_ was what Medicals was concerned about.

That was her fifth draft to be approved by Medicals and the fifth draft they asked her to rework on after only an hour-long meeting with the head-doctors of ‘6, and that no matter how many proof of the harmlessness of the chip’s materials Q could bring. Waves, they said, would insidiously damage the agents’ health over the years and the promise of keeping the device for the most perilous missions did not turn them more lenient.

Her files tightly pressed against her chest, Q left the meeting room, all too aware of the fact that the day had brought nothing close to success in any area – her project had been refused and there was still the ghost of Mycroft’s message floating in her mind, asking to be examined with more than a heightened sense of fatigue. Hopefully her agents were not in the field anymore, some of them on their way back, some of them waiting for their flights and others just recovering for the next ones. That was, all in all, worries that were postponed for another day.

“Q?” came a dark voice across the corridor.

Hr speccy look turned upward to meet the strong silhouette of a certain 00-agent, apparently freshly back from Monaco. “Bond,” she acknowledged with a brief nod, only halting to rub her eyes ad readjust her glasses on her nose.

“It’s surprising to see you here,” the woman continued, way more fresh-faced than Q was in spite of her night flight and… her last mission.

Only then did Q realise the extent of what she had let herself do that morning before work. Her cheeks turned a vivid shade of pink and all the tech-babbling in the world could not have possibly hidden the shame painted all over her face. Perhaps Bond was too used to the effect she produced on people to pick up on Q’s reaction, perhaps her double-O’s mind was still elsewhere, jet-lagged or still navigating Monegasque nights at the casino, but she did not say a thing that would have betrayed her understanding of her quartermaster’s mortification.

“Moneypenny told me this morning you were off for the week-end,” Bond added, which Q took for insistence. “You look tired, maybe you should’ve listened to her,” she chuckled and Q hated her for all her spotless clothes and confident pace.

“Is it why you did not hand back your equipment first thing in the morning?” Q asked, her tone as petulantly incisive as it could be.

Instead of a proper answer, Bond snorted, not the least embarrassed.

“Anyway,” Q added, walking further down the corridor and passing Bond’s intrigued face, as she tried to avoid visual remnants of her fantasies to invade her mental space. “You’ll have to see that with R, I’m off for the evening.”

“Don’t you want to see the ravages for yourself?” The blonde asked, turning around to follow Q with her blue eyes. Q was usually never short on exasperated comments as far as assessing the poor state of her beloved new equipment was concerned – Bond knew she secretly had a lot of fun coming up with the curtest formulations.

“My appointment turned sour, 007, and I’m afraid I cannot take other bad news for the day.”

“Are you alright, Q?” was all Bond found to ask her, her muscular arms a little tense as though her quartermaster was about to faint right there on the anthracite carpeting of the corridor.

“Of course I am, just tired. You said so yourself.” Q turned to face her agent, giving her a little dismissive shrug. Her blush had hopefully vanished in the meantime but her instinct told her to runaway anyway. She still had to mourn her project – the bitterness of the news might have overthrown the striking realism of her fantasies.

“I did. I was just _not_ expecting you’d listen to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm having fun with this fic.   
> Tell me what you thought about this update!


	4. Tools and gadgets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sex is a tool, Q. A part of what I am trained for. I thought it was clear to you. Perhaps you’re too young still to know the difference mutual understanding and feelings can make.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry it took so much longer than I had anticipated, but A) I’m not a native speaker and I struggle a lot recently with my English for reasons that I don’t really understand, B) I’m overwhelmed by an assignment about TS Eliot which is on its way to be very bad, C) I don’t write a lot of lesbian fics (or even fics with female protagonists) and that’s tedious for me although it shouldn’t be. Why is it so hard??   
> I also came to the realisation that this fic is not really good or at least far from what I had thought it would look like. It comforts me in the idea that I was right not to partake in the MI6 prompt thingy that is or was going on recently, for I’m so slow and uninventive.   
> Anyway, here’s the new chapter. I wanted it to be sexy but it turned out rather underwhelming. Meh

“Are you avoiding me?”

The question made Q turn in the queue to the canteen, as her mind was miles away from London, still debating her joining the Holmes’s gathering, and perhaps whether or not she should pick coleslaw or a Scotch egg for her lunch. She turned around to face the blonde she had tried to avoid throughout the last week, since her recent – and more regular than usual - practice of onanism had involved a certain moment of 007’s Monegasque mission.

“Does avoiding you imply queuing for lunch?” Q replied with a smile on her face as she turned around to face Bond. Her surprise had replaced the awkwardness she thought she ought to feel at the statement, for Q had strongly believed that her slight avoidance of Bond outside of the due time of missions had remained unnoticed. She was still unsettled whether the blonde was joking or perfectly serious until Bond’s arms untangled from their crossed position and she chuckled lowly – the sort of low chuckles Q had heard her utter during missions whenever one of their targets came up with an unexpected flash of wit.

“Do you mind me joining you then?”

“This is unavoidable, I suppose?” With a mock tired gesture, she poked her glasses further up her nose bridge.

Once their trays on a table, Q sat, unsure of what their conversation would be made. Bond was just coming back from a few days off the field to recover from a series of missions that had left her physically and probably mentally weary and it was unlikely she would have the bad taste of bringing up work-related subjects for lunch. Some agents would sometimes follow her around to talk about their last missions when all Q wished was some alone time in the company of her tea cup.

“Is it about the sex?” Bond asked and Q nearly chocked on her bite of Scotch egg at the word.

“What is?”

“Your coldness,” Bond clarified as she casually picked a piece of mushroom with the tip of her fork. Q thought there was something quite belligerent that coincided with her words just fine.

“My _coldness_? I’m always cold,” she replied, shaking her head so as to dismiss Bond’s hypothesis. Whenever someone would bring her supposed coldness up, she could not but think about the blood running in her veins – half-Holmes.

“That’s what I thought,” the other woman nodded to herself, chewing on her mushroom. “Alec told me you’d been fazed by the sex.”

Alec, that traitor. Q made a mental note to confiscate him the Aston Martin the next time he would request it.

She wanted to reply that of all the things that had happened at ‘6 since her recruitment, her agents’ sex life was the last thing that had ‘fazed’ her, but Bond immediately added after a theatrical sigh:

“Sex is a tool, Q. A part of what I am trained for. I thought it was clear to you. Perhaps you’re too young still to know the difference mutual understanding and feelings can make.”

It seemed to Q that she was back in childhood, when Mycroft would use the same tone to expose to her the intricacies of the ‘etiquette’ and a surge of anger rose to her throat. “Don’t patronise me, 007. My experience in such areas, or my supposed absence thereof, is none of your concern. My age, as I remember I already told you, never gets in the way of… work.”

To that Bond smiled, visibly amused, and Q’s anger did not falter the least. There was something about the way she smiled that electrified her quartermaster and that oftentimes caused the latter to wonder if that was what made their targets fall into her bed like dead moths.

Her phone buzzed on her plastic tray, just against her plate, and Bond’s eyes turned to the screen which had lit with Mycroft’s name spread on it – bad omen. Q immediately captured the slightly raised left eyebrow on Bond’s face, the creases on her forehead even before she looked up to see if her quartermaster would reply to the text message.

“Your brother,” Bond guessed, since apparently there was little to no secret one could keep from 00-agents.

“Half-brother,” Q corrected. Perhaps she was too old now to deny her affiliation in such petty ways – it had been a game for a long time, a game she liked to play in front of the Holmes’, but a game she was well aware she had to cease playing now.

A frown flourished on Bond’s face, since she knew, like everyone knew given the many ramification they had managed to keep with different instances of British power, that Mr and Mrs Holmes were and would keep on being a tightly woven first union. Less people, if not no one, knew about how the very respectable Holmes patriarch had once slipped into a nineteen-year-old seamstress’s bed and engendered dreadful consequences in the shape of a speccy young woman. Of course it would have helped if Mr Holmes had not been in his late forties at the time and that his elder son roughly a year older than the seamstress, but Q was not willing to share the details with Bond. Especially since she had doubts there had been a bed at all, or even a brief surge of passion.

“Aren’t you going to answer him?” Bond asked, demurely, as if she knew Q could not possibly have appeased relationships with her brothers. If anything, Q looked too independent and detached from everything apart from her work that Bond had always had a hard time imagining the young lady having any sort of life outside R&D. 

“No important matter,” she lied, knowing Mycroft was probably fulminating against her – coldly, composedly fulminating.

At the moment the words left her mouth, the distinctive ringing coming from Q Branch announced R’s voice in her ear piece. _Q, things got tedious with 005._ Bond seemed mildly surprised to see she had kept the device on during her lunch break. Q’s face turned more serious as she understood that an emergency was calling for her active presence. She stood up although half of her meal still remained untouched in her tray.

“Are they starving you?” the blonde asked, waving her fork in the general direction of her young quartermaster.

“It could be that,” Q let out with a shrug. She usually did not have much time to eat anyway, Q Branch always asking her devoted attention – 00-agents more than anyone else for that mattered.

“Well, that’s a shame,” Bond continued with unfaltering confidence even if her interlocutor was walking away from their shared table. “What about dinner this week?”

The question came without Q expecting it and her steps slowed down in the refectory. Hopefully the place was loud enough to cover their words.

“As a payback for bearing with the conversation we had,” 007 added, her icy blue eyes heavy with the understatement. Q was only half pleased with the fact that she considered they could already joke about it.

“It’s true that emergencies sometimes come handy,” she replied, walking away for good this time. Could it be possible that her agent was flirting, treating her like any other female targets on the field? Or was she joking again, like Trevelyan often was with any living thing at MI6? In absence of a proper answer, Q preferred to simply walk away. The truth was like she would not let herself be fooled when it came to one of the things she had been daydreaming about.

“8PM, Saturday night?” Bond called after her, still as relaxed and sure of herself.

Her back turned to her, Q gave the woman a thumb up before leaving her tray on the conveyor belt and stepping out of the refectory. Her mind, anyhow, was already turned into emergency mode and there was not a thing which could stand between her and her duty.

* * *

Saturday night came faster than Q had anticipated. The end of 005’s mission on the other hand did not.

It was nearly 7PM when reality struck her with the realisation that she would have to reach for Bond and tell her that their little dinner thing was to be aborted. Not that the prospect of not getting herself into a classy dress and being able to spend the rest of her night slouched in her couch while watching a repeat broadcast of Doctor Who upset her the least – Q was, after all, a very home-loving being.

But the idea of spending the night with Bond, answering her seductive badinage had grown on her and she had even found herself looking forward to it while thinking about it in the shower that same morning. She could not tell exactly why, she had never been quite into dating and even less into the lengthy protocol of seduction – humans were way less predictable than machines and Q found no satisfaction in obtaining what she wanted, be it she wanted anything at all.

With Bond on the contrary…

**Still at 6. We better cancel if that’s alright with you**. She sent with her left hand as her right was still going through the little intel 005 had managed to recover.

The answer came less than a minute later, no trace of annoyance to be found in the choice of words, Q analysed. **Don’t mind the time. I’ll pick you up at yours whenever you text me.** Q did not have the time, nor the creativity to reply, before another text came along, not distracting in her mission, providing on the contrary a little peace of mind. **Unless you’re tired and want to rest**.

Gosh did Q want to rest. Of course she was not more tired than usual, just resentful that once again she would have to give excessive thoughts about her schedule.

Once 005 was out of danger, she looked at her phone again, the carriage of the Tube lulling her into mild relaxation. It was 9PM already, their dinner probably more than compromised in spite of what Bond had assured her earlier.

**Any dress code?** She tried, hoping 007 would take it as a hint that she was now out of duty. She knew her agents had expensive and quite classy tastes after all.

**Whatever you want to wear**. It sounded tricky, Q thought as the carriage stopped at Moorgate so she could change for the Hammersmith & City line. What was “whatever you want to wear” supposed to mean? What Q wanted to wear at the moment was her flannelette pyjamas and certainly not a tight dress the Holmes had talked her into buying for God knew what occasion they had found to celebrate. Christmas?

Her black velvet and organza dress would do the trick, she thought while attempting to put some order into her curls, with little success. The dress was a present from Mrs Holmes, straight out of her annual shopping spree at Harrods, a present that Q had first wanted to politely decline before Mycroft had given her the Mycroft look, the one that carried twenty-five years of gentle disapprobation. It was time maybe to colour this dress with happier memories.

It was nearly 10PM when Q texted Bond to tell her she was ready as she tried to keep her cats at bay so they would not cover her black dress with variations of red and brown hairs. What she received as a reply was a simple thumb up – a thumb up! – from Bond.

Twenty minutes later, the German monstrosity her agent drove stopped down her apartment complex and Q left the comfort of her heated flat for London early spring less than two minutes, just the time for her to get into Bond’s car. In the darkness of the passenger compartment, Q could not see what the other was wearing, except that the blonde’s throat was covered with a seemingly expensive turtle neck.

“I wonder what restaurant still accepts customers at this hour,” Q began once their quite formal greetings had left the compartment silent and uncomfortable.

Bond just smiled and drove on, leaving East London for the city centre. “Let’s say I’ve got a few contacts.”

Q felt her brow rise. “Of course you have,” she heard herself sarcastically reply before her attention shifted to the road, enjoying the few calm moments she was offered in her day to relax in the leather seat and recharge her batteries as fast as she could. It seemed that it was the life she was meant to live now – exhausting beyond words, but so much more exciting than anything she could have portrayed herself doing before, so much so that her years before MI6 appeared foreign, like centuries ago.

* * *

“That’s very mysterious to me,” Q commented, half-amused, half-worried about what she was supposed to discover on top of the building Bond was leading her through with the stylish nonchalance of someone used to evolve in such spheres. Contrarily to what one could think about Q’s social background, about her childhood and the people she had met throughout her upbringing, she was in fact _not_ used to such situations. The comfort of her home usually prevailed on restaurant dates, fancy outfits and clubs, whatever Bond could imagine – although Q was sure that now Bond had realised that she was not comfortable in any other place but her cherished lab.

“We’ll be there soon,” the blonde informed her as the elevator’s doors opened on a long corridor covered in velvety red material, like the décor of a Gothic play, except that they were heading towards a glass door which opened on a quiet restaurant, more empty than full, Q assumed because of the late hour.

She had to give that to Bond that the place was a perfect combination of relaxed and what people might have called ‘romantic’, which allowed the ambiguous aura of the night to linger further between them. Q did not really know what point Bond was willing to make, feed her or woe her, but both appeared like a good distraction to her monotonous life outside of work and if anything Q wanted to be sure of what was going on in her co-worker’s mind that she had deemed necessary to organise all of that for her.

A waiter who apparently recognised Bond led them to a table on the far corner of the restaurant, next to an open view of London and hidden by a screen of vegetation that Q had first thought was fake until she perceived the distinct smell of wisteria. It brought her back to her days at university, where such a vine used to climb on the wall of her college, around her window. The screen made it impossible for the rest of the restaurant to see them and Q was unsure whether it was Bond’s nature of agent speaking or simply her wish for them to dine isolated.

“So you come here often,” Q concluded once the waiter had walked away to get them menus.

“Often enough, that’s true.” She still seemed watchful about the waiter’s presence, waiting for him to go away with their wine order before relaxing in her seat and watching Q with more pleasant eyes. “Do you like it?”

Q prevented herself from asking Bond about what the German term to describe her need for approbation, if not validation, was, since she actually felt wrapped in a cocoon of warmth after an excruciating day at MI6. Her posture might have been too slouched, too informal but Bond did not seem to mind the least, seemingly taking a great pleasure in staring at her with the pleased smile.

“Very much,” Q admitted before her green eyes wandered around the place, or at least what she could perceive of it through the vegetal screen. “I would’ve bet you had a fondness for classy old pubs, with hunting trophies and good scotch, but I might’ve been wrong the whole time.”

“This place has a good selection of scotch,” Bond grinned as if utterly delighted to be seen right through.

The coming back of the waiter did not distract Q from the pleasure of winning and Bond’s smile did not falter either, both of them almost completely oblivious of the young man’s presence.

“What shall we drink to?” The older woman asked after the waiter had left once more, with their full order this time. “To your very successful few months with us?”

“Could there be something more stereotypical than that?” Q replied, raising her glass nonetheless - the wine, after all, seemed nice and she was not willing to delay her full appreciation of it with more comments on Bond’s lack of creativity in the toast department. It was sweet, anyway.

“To your frustrating taste in gadgets that nevertheless helped me out during most of my missions?”

“ _Most of_?” Q repeated, their glasses clinking against one another before they took a careful sip of it. “Any petty critic shall be rewarded with even more frustrating gadgets, just so you know, Bond.” 

“Oh, come on, we’re having dinner, aren’t we supposed to be on a first-name basis now?” Bond chuckled, her long fingers curling around her glass of wine. Q noticed only then in the cosy darkness of the restaurant that the skin of her knuckles was scratched from her previous mission and that she carried in her shoulders a certain tension that could only mean that the help of her gadgets had not kept her from that sort of discomfort. Not that Q minded all that much, she believed in the sadistic endeavour of MI6 towards their agents and even more in the masochistic tendencies of the 00s. “So tell me, what’s your real name, _Q_?”

“Certain things, mind you, should remain a secret,” the brunette softly threatened, taking another sip of her wine so the alcohol might help her through what she was about to say. Q had other issues but to reveal her birth name, even though the whole affair was properly ridiculous and had cost her many sobriquets while at school. Also she wanted to know what her name would sound on Bond’s tongue. “Wilhelda.”

To that Bond could not but frown, a distinctive crease forming between her eyebrows. “Wilhelda,” she repeated, slightly baffled but keeping her composure, as if testing the name like she had just done with her wine. “That’s the first time I ever hear this name. A rather strange one. But surely charming.”

“My father strongly believes in the benefits of gifting his offspring with the hardest names to bear,” Q replied, swirling her wine in her glass.

But in spite of all her witty wordiness, Bond noticed the unease with which her lips curled around the word ‘father’ and how it possessed the same cold detachment Q adopted when discussing displeasing matters.

“What about your mum? Didn’t she have her say?”

The question was asked with genuine curiosity but triggered nothing but a shrug.

“There’re always nicknames,” she conceded. And Bond believed there must have been dozens of them – she could herself think about a few ones already with which she would like to refer to Q. “But I’d like you to stick with Q, if you don’t mind.”

Whether Bond minded or not was obviously not a determinant factor in the continuation of their relationship. It would be Q, period.

“Besides, you never told me your name. I assume those on your passports are all fake.”

“I thought you’d looked for it.”

“Six keeps me rather busy, to be fair. Plus, I like it sometimes when things just pliantly go my way, for a change. Like a treat.

A grin stretched on Bond’s lips, approving the turn the conversation was taking after the wine had loosened their tongues and reduced ever so slightly the daily stress her quartermaster went through.

“Are you deserving enough?”

Q snorted, the air she expelled through her delicate nostrils drawing concentric waves in her wine. “I had a rough day, Bond. Please don’t make me delay my bedtime even further with exploring MI6 servers.”

“I know better but to mess with my quartermaster’s bedtime routine.”

“Are you flirting, 007?” came Q’s answer to the voluptuous – and quite underwhelming – assurance that her sleep would never be disturbed by Bond, one way or another. “That’s frightening.”

“Frightening or flattering?”

Q could feel her agent was toying with her reactions the same way a spider meticulously waited for its prey to get trapped in its sticky web. Yet she could not ignore the fleeting shivers some of Bond’s words had on her body, including how aware she was of the sensation of the silky fabric of her dress against her breast. “A little bit of both.”

Giving in, Bond leaned forward and whispered the most surprising thing in Q’s ear, leaving on the younger woman’s face the ghost of a smile, the result of both the blush creeping to her cheeks and the sardonic rictus she momentarily tried to suppress.

“There is no way I’m calling you that,” she replied as Bond captured her shock with a snigger surely coming from decades of witnessing the same reaction to the revelation of her first name. “Bond will do.”

“I hope so,” the blonde agreed, her voice warm at Q’s decision. It sounded like an oath they were taking, the both of them, and Bond was pleased with it.

* * *

Once the German car stopped in front of her apartment complex, Q suppressed a sigh of disappointment, or was it tiredness? It was nearly one in the morning and Q could not tell whether she would have preferred Bond to insist a little bit more about having a _last drink_ somewhere or if the prospect of her bed and a quiet night was a delightful enough prospect. Their knees had touched several times throughout dinner and more than once had Q felt like the tip of her shoe had lingered for a little too long against Bond’s, but going through the trouble of sex seemed incredibly more tiring than regretting it for the rest of her life.

“Thanks for the night,” she whispered in the quietness of the driving compartment once Bond had turned the ignition off.

“Are you pouting?” She asked, amused, obviously not as tired as Q was. Far from it.

“I usually don’t know what to do after dinners,” Q admitted, knowing that the use of _usually_ was a little bit pretentious in her case and Bond must have known for she smiled at her, her short nails caressing the wheel gently.

“Where you expecting me to do something?”

“What do you usually do after dinners?” Q began before sighing, “no don’t tell me, I’ve already been an auditive witness of that. But the truth, Bond, is that in the shape I am at the moment I’d find it hard to do anything more than just lie there like a starfish.”

Only a sympathetic low chuckle answered her.

“For real, it’d be dreadful,” Q insisted, laughing at herself now.

“ _Dreadful_? You shouldn’t doubt me like that,” Bond replied, a smile perceptible in her voice. There was a pause before Bond added, “Go home, Q, have some rest. You deserve it.”

Contrary to anything Q would have imagined of someone like Bond who seemed to have a certain sex drive, she did not seem disappointed by that, not being given what she had obviously been searching in Q. _She_ on the other hand was disappointed, firstly in the misalignment of planets which had led her to be so tired and unprepared for a night she would have most likely enjoyed. She opened her door and waved Bond goodnight, the night air chilling her to the bone as she walked towards her the entry door. She did not hear Bond’s car driving away from her street, as she was probably watching she got to her door safe and sound, and she took it as a sign, rushing back to the window and opening the door.

“Would it be very rude to say I’ve changed my mind?” She asked, her lungs filling with air. “Not _all_ of my gadgets are frustrating.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the pun... 
> 
> Comments and kudos mean the world at the moment. D:


End file.
